MORE LIGHT

SHORT TALK BULLETIN - Vol.V April, 1927
No.4

by: Unknown

Goethe was one of the myriad-minded men of our race, and
a devout member of our gentle Craft. When he lay dying, as the soft shadow
began to fall over his mind, he said to a friend watching over his bed : “open
the window and let in more light!” The last request of a great poet-Mason
is the first quest of every Mason.

If one were asked to sum up the meaning of Masonry in one
word, the only word equal to the task is - light! From its first lesson to
its last lecture, in every degree and every symbol, the mission of Masonry is to
bring the light of God into the life of man. It has no other aim, knowing
that when the light shines the truth will be revealed.

A Lodge of Masons is a House of Light. Symbolically
it has no roof but the sky, open to all the light of nature and of grace.
As the sun rises in the East to open and rule the day, so the Master rises in
the East to open and guide the Lodge in its labor. All the work of the
Lodge is done under the eye and in the name of God, obeying Him who made the
great lights, whose mercy endureth forever.

At the center of the Lodge, upon the Altar of Obligation,
the Great Lights shine upon us, uniting the light of nature and the whiter light
of revelation. Without them no Lodge is open in Due Form, and no business
is valid. As the moon reflects the light of the sun, as the stars are seen
only when the sun is hidden, so the Lesser Lights follow dimly when the Greater
Lights lead.

To the door of the Lodge comes the seeker after Light,
hoodwinked and groping his way - asking to be led out of shadows into realities;
out of darkness into light. All initiation is “Bringing Men To Light,”
teaching them to see the moral order of the world in which they must learn their
duty and find their true destiny. It is the most impressive drama on
earth, a symbol of the Divine education of man. So, through all its
degrees, its slowly unfolding symbols, the ministry of Masonry is to make men
“Sons Of Light” - men of insight and understanding who know their way and can be
of help to others who stumble in the dark. Ruskin was right: “To See
Clearly is Life, Art, Philosophy and Religion - All In One.” When the
light shines the way is plain, and the highest service to humanity is to lead
men out of the confused life of the senses into the light of moral law and
spiritual faith.

To that end Masonry opens upon its Altar the one great
Book of Light, its pages glow with “A Light That Never Was On Sea Or Land,”
shining through the tragedies of man and the tumults of time, showing us a path
that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. From its first page to
the last , the key-word of the Bible is light; until, at the end, when the City
of God is built it will have no need of the sun or the moon or the stars; for
God is the Light of it.

And God Said, Let There Be Light; And there
was light. God Is Light, And In Him Is, No Darkness At All. Thy Word
Is A Lamp Unto My Feet;

And A Light Unto My Path. The entrance Of Thy Word,
Giveth Light.

The Lord Is My Light And My Salvation; Whom I Shall
Fear.

There Is No Light For The Righteous, Gladness For The True.

The Lord Shall Be To Thee An Everlasting Light.

To Them That Sat In Darkness, Light Is Sprung Up.

He Stumbleth Not, Because He Seeth The Light. I Am
Come A Light Into The World, While Ye Have The Light, Believe In The Light.

Let Your Light Shine Before Man.

To find the real origin of Masonry we must go far back
into the past, back before history. All the world over, at a certain stage
of culture, men bowed down in worship of the sun, moon and the stars. In
prehistoric graves the body was always buried in a sitting position, and always
facing to the East, that the sleeper might be ready to spring up early to face
the new and brighter day.

Such was the wonder of light and its power over man, and
it is not strange that he rejoiced in its beauty, lifting up hands of praise.
The Dawn was the first Altar in the old Light Religion of the race.
Sunrise was an hour of prayer, and sunset, with its soft farewell fires, was the
hour of sacrifice. After all, religion is a Divine Poetry, of which creeds
are prose versions. Gleams of this old Light religion shine all through
Masonry, in its faith, in its symbols, and still more in its effort to organize
the light of God in the Soul of Man.

Such a faith is in accord with all the poetries and
pieties of the race. Light is the loveliest gift of God to man; it is the
mother of beauty and the joy of the world. It tells man all that he knows,
and it is no wonder that his speech about it is gladsome and grateful.
Light is to the mind what food is to the body; it brings the morning, when the
shadows flee away, and the loveliness of the world is unveiled.

Also, there is a mystery in light. It is not
matter, but a form of motion; it is not spirit, though is seems closely akin to
it. Midway between the material and the spiritual, it is the gateway where
matter and spirit pass and repass. Of all the glories in its gentleness, its
benignity, its pity, falling with impartial benediction alike upon the just and
the unjust, upon the splendor of wealth and the squalor of poverty.

Yes, God is light, and the mission of Masonry is to open
the windows of the mind of man, letting the dim spark within us meet and blend
with the light of God, in whom there is no darkness. There is “A Light That
Lighteth Every Man That Cometh Into The World,” as we learn in the Book of Holy
Law; but too often it is made dim by evil, error and ignorance; until it seems
well nigh to have gone out. Here now some of the most terrible words in
the Bible: “Eyes they have, but they do not see.” How many tragedies it
explains, how many sorrows it accounts for. Most of our bigotries and
brutalities are due to blindness. Most of the cruel wrongs we inflict upon
each other are the blows and blunders of the sightless. Othello was
blinded by jealousy, Macbeth by ambition; as we are apt to be blinded by
passion, prejudice or greed.

With merciful clarity Jesus saw that men do awful things
without seeing what they do. “Father, forgive them for they know not what
they do.” The pages of history are blacker than the hearts of the men that
made the history. Man is not as wicked as the wrongs he has done.
Unless we see this fact, much of the history of man will read like the records
of hell - remembering the atrocities of the Inquisition, the terrors of the
French Revolution, and the red horror of Russia. It is all a hideous
nightmare - man stumbling and striking in the dark.

No, humanity is more blind than bad. In his play,
“St. Joan,” Shaw makes one of his characters say: “If you only saw what
you think about, you would think quite differently about it. It would give
you a great shock. I am not cruel by nature, but I did not know what cruelty was
like. I have been a different man ever since.” Alas, he did not see what
he had done until the hoodwink had been taken off. More and more some of
us divide men into two classes - those who see and those who do not see.
The whole quality and meaning of life lies in what men see or fail to see.
And what we see depends upon what we are. In the Book of the Holy Law the
verb “to see” is close akin to the verb “to be,” which is to teach us that
character is the secret and source of insight. Virtue is vision; vice is
blindness.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see god.”

Thus our gentle Masonry, by seeking to “Bring Men to
Light,” not simply symbolically but morally and spiritually, is trying to lift
the shadow of evil, ignorance and injustice off the life of man. It is a
benign labor, to which we may well give the best that we are or hope to be,
toiling to spread the skirts of light that we and all men may see what is true
and do what is right.

What the sad world needs - what each of us needs - is
more light, more love, more clarity of mind and more charity of heart; and this
is what Masonry is trying to give us. Once we take it to heart, it will
help us to see God in the face of our fellows, to see the power of a lie and its
inherent weakness because it is false, to see the glory of truth and its final
victory - to see these things is to be a Mason, to see these things is to be
saved.